You do not currently have permission to view the full text for this document. Please sign in to an account with an active subscription or contact support.
In psychoanalytic literature the words 'identification' and 'projection' have been used in so broad a sense as to have caused a semantic confusion. Defining the various concepts and limiting the use of terms according to agreement would render a service to analytic discussion.
In psychoanalysis identification is never employed according to its common English usage, that is, proof of the identity or recognition of somebody, but is employed chiefly to indicate introjection. This means that one assumes traits of another object which may imply unconscious incorporation of this object. From the metapsychological point of view the process of identification consists of the extension of the ego cathexis over an object representation (Federn [1]). If the term 'identification' were employed only in this sense it would be unequivocal. We also read, however, that an individual 'identifies' two or more objects with one another, when it is meant that he equates one with the other. When one says that somebody 'identifies' an object with himself, or himself with another object, this term is employed to cover projective as well as introjective processes. One speaks of identification when one acknowledges actual traits which two or more objects have in common with one another or with oneself, and also when indicating that the individual only ascribes to one object some features of himself or of some other object. Still another meaning of identification is the coinciding of one aspect of a person or of oneself with the whole person. For instance, if a woman feels only motherliness, she is said to 'identify' herself with her maternal function. For the sake of clarity one should rather say that her ego feeling limits itself to this function of being motherly.